Posts Tagged ‘Berg’

By ANDREW POWELL Published: March 9, 2017 MUNICH — Making a taut and impassioned case for Mahler’s Tenth Symphony (1910) here at the Herkulessaal Feb. 17, Yannick Nézet-Séguin still rather confirmed Leonard Bernstein’s dictum that the composer “had said it all in the Ninth.” Mahler’s inspiration sustained itself, as tidily executed by the Symphonie-Orchester des […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: June 6, 2015 MUNICH — After the genetic mismatch of Kirill Petrenko and Gaetano Donizetti here, it was a relief to watch the conductor easily navigate and ignite the tone rows of Lulu last week (May 25 and 29) at the National Theater. Happily he did so using Cerha’s reconstitution of […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: March 24, 2014 MUNICH — Few conductors can jump into a Berg-Zemlinsky-Honegger program on three days’ notice and lead it fluently without change. Enter Clement Power (33), a gray-haired Londoner, for the Münchener Kammerorchester’s March 13 subscription concert here at the Prince Regent Theater. The newcomer showed an easy rapport with […]

by Sedgwick Clark Shaham’s 1939 Dark Horse Gil Shaham had an epiphany. After years of recognition as one of the brightest young lights of the concert circuit, the Israeli-American violinist conjured one of the most imaginative programming concepts in years. He had been struck by how many violin concertos written in the 1930s had entered […]

by Sedgwick Clark Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic are on a European tour for a couple of weeks, and for a change I didn’t roll my eyes in despair when I saw the list of repertoire. His predecessors as music director, Kurt Masur and Lorin Maazel, for all their superb work at building […]

by Sedgwick Clark I first met Omus Hirshbein in Carnegie Hall’s executive offices, where he worked for a brief time in 1973 between tenures at the Hunter College Concert Bureau and the 92nd Street Y. He was walking out of a planning meeting, saying in frustration to anyone nearby, “They won’t listen to me—they should […]

by Sedgwick Clark In their wildest dreams, the six string quartets couldn’t have asked for more. Nor could music lovers, as the Manhattan School of Music rang in the New Year with what it called the “Inaugural Robert Mann String Quartet Institute.” Yes, this is why I left Muncie, but this time my hometown friends […]

By Alan Gilbert I’ve recently tried my hand at acrylic painting, and just bought a how-to book that stresses the overriding importance of composition — i.e. form and the use of spatial elements — in a successful work of art. By that measure, I can tell you right now that this blog entry will not […]